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This book examines a political movement in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic called "Radical Cartesianism." This movement applies ideas from the New Philosophy (particular those of Hobbes and Descartes) to the political and theological debates of the time. On the basis of self-interest and a Cartesian understanding of the passions, Radical Cartesianism argues for religious, intellectual, and economic freedom, toleration and democracy. Spinoza was closely associated with members of the Radical Cartesian movement and his political philosophy presents the first philosophical systematization of its central ideas. This book reconstructs the development of Spinoza's thinking about the human mind, error, truth, and falsity and explains how this development allowed Spinoza to provide the philosophical foundations for Radical Cartesian political theory. I argue that Spinoza's rejection of Cartesian epistemology involves much more than the metaphysical problem of dualism--it involves, ironically, Spinoza's attempt to make coherent a political theory bearing Descartes' name.